Many have testified that literature has been a delightful, stimulating and satisfying entertainment for him. In a letter to Balzac (October 30, 1840) he shared with his eminent and respected contemporary that he wrote with great pleasure, because he dampened in the things written about him and "I never think about it to make a novel ". Zweig suggests, "He does not think about form, criticism, audience, newspapers, and eternity, but as a flawless selfish artist he only thinks about himself and his pleasure". According to him, Stendhal has become a writer, only to get to know himself, builds himself as a fine artist in the literature, only to portray his own personality. It is true that when they accuse him of excessive self-love, he responds with pitiful modesty: "I observe the human soul."

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Stendhal develops, according to Zweig, a genius psychological system - never gives time for his feelings to be adjusted to look good "or" moral ":" His marvelous superiority to all objective psychologists is due to this , that he exercises the science of the heart cheerfully, wittily and with joy as art, not professionally serious as a profession. Like Nietzsche, he has not only a good, brave thought, but in cases and a charmingly arrogant thought. In 1822, Parisian viewers, zealous supporters of classical taste in the theater, are scandalized by the daring interpretation of Shakespeare's drama, which features young English actors on the stage of Port de Saint Martin. In the literary salons of the French capital, a fierce controversy arises between the supporters of classics and the innovating romanticists who honor Shakespeare as the most authoritative predecessor of the new artistic trend in drama. In the same year, the unusual essayist studio with letters embedded in it, exchanged between Classics and Romance, "Rasin and Shakespeare," with which Stendhal declares himself a passionate champion for the renewal of literary motives and theater in France.

In the third chapter, Stendhal defines Romanticism as the art of creating literary works that, in the current state of the customs and beliefs of the nations, provide them with as much pleasure as possible while classicism offers them literature that has supplied the greatest possible pleasure of their grandfathers. According to him, "Shakespeare was a romantic because he presented to the English people, from 1590, the bloody clashes as a result of civil wars, and then for the rest of those sad views - a whole series of exquisite images of heartbeats and shades of the most sophisticated passions . He acknowledges that to be a romantic, courage is needed, as he has to be confident, and the classist always seeks the secret support in several verses from an established writer or philosopher who worked through antiquity. Stendhal is convinced that the delightful and so rare moments of a perfect illusion can only be found in the intimate atmosphere of some lively scene when the artists' replies follow fast as in life and claims that the brief moments of perfect illusion meet often in the tragedies of Shakespeare than in Rasin's tragedies. He attacks the French admirers of Boalo's theoretical dogma: "I say that the observance of the two unities - in place and time - is a French habit, a deeply rooted habit, a habit that will be difficult to get rid of because Paris is the saloon of Europe and its gives a tune? but I would add that these unities are unnecessary to provoke deep excitement and a truly dramatic effect.

The romantic Stendhal thinks that evil as a moral position must appear on the stage and assumes that it will bring dynamics to the theater: The romantic in today's tragedy is that the poet always assigns a good role to the devil. He speaks very eloquently and likes it very much. People love the opposition. After making the statement that "Romantics do not advise anyone to emulate the Shakespearean dramas directly, Stendhal writes: "The worthy imitation of this great man is the way of studying the world in which we live and the ability to give our contemporaries exactly the same tragedy they need, but they do not have the courage to ask, being suppressed by the glory of the great Rasin. In a letter from Romance to the Classics, a definition of the romantic tragedy is proposed: The romantic tragedy is written in prose, the series of events it presents to viewers lasts for several months and is played in different places. Further on, the study and Stendhal's theoretical idea of ​​a romantic comedy: the action in it covers a time of three and a half months; it takes place in various places throughout Paris, between Theatre Français and Clay; it is at last written in prose, in despised prose, remember this.

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Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Part 5